NASA’s Juno probe outdoes itself with stunning new Jupiter photos

It’s only been a few days since one of the photos sent back by NASA’s Juno probe took our breath away, but now even more of the craft’s stellar photography is coming to light. Juno is currently making its way around Jupiter, and taking lots and lots of photos along the way. The images are sent back to Earth without much color, meaning that photography gurus here on our planet need to spruce them up a bit to make them look more “real.” These are the fruits of their labor:

NASA’s JunoCam website is a fantastic place to soak up images like these, with amateur astronomers taking the time to sift through the raw images sent back by the probe in search of the best shots. Using a variety of photo editing software, the photos are then enhanced with the colors that are known to be prominent on various sections of the planet, like the milky browns, grays and blues that you see in the images.

NASA then publishes the edited photos, which users can sort and filter to find what they’re looking for, with the best of the best finding their way to the “Featured Submissions” section. It’s a pretty slick little system, and it produces a steady stream of really fantastic celestial eye candy. Of course, you can also check out the unedited photos, most of which are quite dark and offer very little contrast, but are sometimes pretty impressive anyway. There’s also a voting section where you can choose what areas of the planet you want JunoCam to focus on.